Posts by bluebirdmama
Perpetual Calendar
Last month, during the Back-to-School excitement, I wrote about feeling like my little homeschooled Kindergarten boy might be missing out on some of the fun things about actually going to a school. Among the things I remember from Kindergarten was sitting on the carpet every day and talking about what day it was on the calendar. Rain is getting old enough that he can begin to grasp the idea of days and weeks and has been asking about time a lot. I thought this was a good time to introduce the calendar to him. Besides that, one of the things we are focusing on in our learning this year is the idea of rhythm, or cycles. I am borrowing this concept from some of my reading on the Waldorf philosophy earlier this year. Waldorf places a strong emphasis on celebrating yearly festivals, including birthdays, on the seasons and rhythm in the natural world, and on rhythms during the day. Using this as an over-arching theme works well during this Kindergarten year as it provides us opportunity to go on nature walks, to keep a nature table, to learn about natural science and seasons, to learn about festivals around the world (Humanities) and to incorporate lots of cool crafts. But on top of all that, it gives me an opportunity to help Rain understand what it means to wait 5 minutes, or until Saturday—practical stuff (oh yeah, with a bit of math and reading in there too as he learns to recognize numbers and words). I wanted a hands-on calendar, kind of like I remember from school where we each got a turn putting up the number for the day. Last winter, I made an advent calendar that didn’t involve daily presents or chocolates and my google image search for magnetic advent calendars yielded up a bunch of different ideas. I decided to adapt one of them to our present use. Here is the result: To make this, you’ll need: 12 sheets of scrapbook paper in patterns that represent each month Letter size magnet sheets (you can get printable magnet sheets in this size at office supply stores like Staples. Maybe you can find something similar at Michael’s or another craft store. It doesn’t need to be printable. It just needs to be big.) Letter size clear printable labels Rubber cement Decide on the dimensions you want for each piece. For the months, I used 7cm x 28cm. I was able to fit 3 months per magnet sheet. For the days, I used 4 cm x 4 cm and I was able to fit all 31 days on 1 magnet sheet. Trim the scrapbook paper to these dimensions and carefully rubber cement it on to the magnet sheets. Now, trim the magnets to their final sizes. You can use Word or another computer program with lots of fonts to print the numbers and the names of the months and days on to your clear labels. You might be able to print all of it on just a couple of sheets of labels, depending on the size of font you use and how you space them together. Just make sure you leave a bit of room for trimming them. Trim, peel off the backing and stick them on your magnets to create 12 months, 7 days of the week and 31 dates. Stick them to the fridge. We also made some extra magnets for marking important dates. We also have plans to make some that show the weather. Have fun! (It’s not as complicated as it...
Read MoreYou Are What You Eat
Last night I had the pleasure of getting out for an evening with Aaron (!) and the privilege of seeing Joel Salatin speak. I first saw Joel in the movie Food, Inc. (which I highly recommend, by the way) and I was captivated by his passion for sustainable farming. He operates a family farm in Virginia called Polyface Farm and has been featured in Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma and also in the documentary Fresh. Here is a clip of Joel from Fresh: Joel’s family raises pasture-fed beef, pork and poultry on their once totally depleted, almost soil-less farm which they completely revitalized without sowing any seed. Refining methods introduced by his father, Joel rotates his herds through his land using portable electric fences to allow the land to replenish itself naturally, without fertilizers. The animals eat grass and roam in the open air. This is the exact opposite of the feedlots and industrial food system. Salatin argues for the local food movement, for transparency in the food production system, for a re-integration of our rural and urban lifestyles where we respect our food producers and include them in the communities where we live and work. He urged us not to expect change overnight but to do what we can every day to change our food system. Ideas included turning the millions of acres of lawns in North America to edible food gardens, reinstating the kitchen as the heart of our homes where we make our food from scratch from real ingredients (not unpronounceable ingredients that come in packages), buying from local farms that allow us to tour the premises and of course, gardening with our children. With sparkling eyes and a big grin, he is a compelling, even mischievous speaker, as he said last night, “I definitely recommend that you break a lot of laws.” This was in response to the question at the end of the night from a man who stated that everything he wants to do is illegal so what laws should he break first. Of course, Joel is referring to the over-regulation of ordinary citizens who want to make their own choices about the food they eat: whether it’s to buy eggs from the neighbour, have backyard chickens or drink unpasteurized milk. I was already sold on his message, but I was further enamored when with a roll of his eyes he stated that our disconnect with food began back in the day when people decided that breastfeeding wasn’t good enough for our babies. He went on to tout the virtues of La Leche League, Lamaze and having dads in the delivery room as examples of ways the pendulum is starting to swing back towards an acceptance of the sanctity of life, even the sanctity of life of the least among us (the animals and plants we eat). Maybe it’s because I’m a hormonal pregnant woman but when he ended his speech by saying, “May your children call you blessed for they have inherited a better earth than we had,” I had just a little tear in my...
Read MoreGetting Organized
“The best thing I did was fill the house full of projects they could get out and do themselves.” My sister said this to me recently when we were discussing her 7 years homeschooling her 4 children. One of the things that comes up for parents who have multiple children learning at home is how to keep younger children occupied while you are working with an older child on something. This dilemma has been on my mind quite a bit, particularly because the younger children I’ll be wrangling will be a toddler and a newborn. I’ve been reading some posts on how to handle wee ones underfoot while learning with older kids but so far I keep coming back to my sister’s advice. I decided to gather a bunch of kid-friendly projects in one spot. We have this great bank of built-in cupboards at one end of our dining room. This has a bunch of random stuff stuck in it (even in the visible areas, as you can see). I spent Thursday afternoon re-organizing so that now it looks like this: Everything in this cupboard is for the kids. The very top shelf has some items the kids will need help with, but the rest, they can pretty much just go for. The beauty of this little cubbie is that we already had almost everything you see there but it was stored all over the house. The only things I bought were some of the art supplies. The storage boxes are shoe boxes I picked up for free from Payless Shoes after calling them and asking if they’d be willing to set aside boxes that were roughly the same size. They were very accomodating – you can bet I’ll be getting Rain’s new sneakers and Noa’s new rubber boots at Payless after that. Then I covered the ends with scrapbook paper thanks to this idea from Our Big Earth. Wanna see what we’ve got in there? The top shelf has a box of lacing cards, painting materials, notebooks, pencil crayons in glass jars, a box of crafting supplies, a box of art supplies. The middle shelf has foam puzzles, a giant floor puzzle, and various kid games including Mighty Mind*, Memory, Uno, Tangrams and more. The bottom shelf has big kid puzzles and a stack of toddler puzzles. I imagine that the contents of this area will change now and then over the course of the year to keep it fresh and to make space when we get new things. In the mean time, the kids are already thrilled to be able to open the two doors and choose whatever they like to work on. Now if we can just get some kind of handle on a routine for the day, maybe our lives will be as organized as this cupboard. What tips do you have for keeping younger kids busy while you help an older one with a project? What solo projects can your older kids do while you’re busy nursing a baby or putting a toddler down for a nap? How have you organized your house to make it kid-friendly? I would love more ideas for the year(s) ahead. *By the way, Mighty Mind is pretty darn great but their website is terrible, which is why the link above takes you to a place to buy the product. It shows an actual picture so you can see what it is. I’m not trying to make you buy...
Read MoreFive
Last night, before tucking Rain in bed, we read him this poem from our new Gateways book: When I have said my evening prayer, And my clothes are folded on the chair, And mother switches off the light, I’ll still be four years old tonight. But, from the very break of day, Before the children rise and play, Before the greenness turns to gold, Tomorrow, I’ll be five years old. Five kisses when I wake, Five candles on my cake. Five years ago today, Rain was born at sunrise, on the last day of summer. It was a glorious sunny morning and Trout Lake was still and calm, reflecting the golds and greens of the park. When I think of the day he was born, I cherish that vision of the lake, even though I saw it because I was on my way into an ambulance for a retained placenta. At the time, I thought we’d be back in a few short hours to soak up that sunshine with our new gorgeous baby. Unfortunately, within an hour, my infant son and I were seperated for the first time and I spent the next few hours unconscious. We spent the remainder of that day in a window-less recovery room at BC Women’s hospital and didn’t get home until dinner time the next day. That glimpse of the lake as I stepped out to the ambulance is the only moment I had of that beautiful last day of summer in 2005, the day Rain joined us. That moment of blinding sun after a long hard night is the way I think of Rain, who, despite his name, really is a ray of sunshine. He is wild and tender, a great story teller, a brilliant inventor, an infectious laugh and a barrel full of energy. And he is five. How things have changed in these last five years. As I feel this new baby fluttering in my belly, I find it amazing to think of the person I was when I first felt Rain kicking. I still feel very much like I’m just a novice at this game called parenting, yet I’ve learned so much since those early days with baby Rain. Five years certainly is a respectable start. Looking at my boy, so big and still so little, I can’t help but feel that five is a bit of a milestone. Perhaps because five is often associated with heading off to Kindergarten, five feels like the beginning of a long slow letting go. Granted, I truly believe that letting go begins the moment you feel that first contraction. Nevertheless, five seems to mark the time when our kids will begin to go out into the world, at least for parts of the day, without mom & dad. That part fills me with wonder and pride and sadness and my heart swells and I get just a tiny bit choked up as I give him five kisses when he...
Read MoreBack to Homeschool Shopping
Just in case I gave you the mistaken impression that we are sitting here at home crying into our Shreddies because we aren’t going to school, here are some fun things we’ve got going on because we stay home. We ordered some supplies to support some of Rain’s ideas for his learning plan for the year. We’ve got art supplies for painting and colouring, notebooks for recording Rain’s stories and crafting supplies for learning wet felting and hand sewing little felt creatures. We’ve also got several books to support our theme of looking at the rhythms of the year (inspired by some of our talks with the local Waldorf school). We’ll be focusing on birthdays, festivals and celebrations, on the seasons, on learning how the calendar works (days, weeks, months). The books we’ve ordered include songs, stories, poems and crafts for all these different times of the year. We’re still working on storage solutions for the new stuff and we recently finished a calendar project that I’ll share with you later in the week. In the mean time, rest assured that we are not regretting our decision to homeschool just because we’ve been feeling the pangs of back-to-school nostalgia. Crafters and homelearners – do you have any new stuff that’s got you excited to play with your...
Read More
Recent Comments
No comments to display